Literature Circles in Action!

So, I have to admit that I have been a terrible blogger this school year, but I promise that is going to change the rest of the school year! My new quarter resolution is to post once a week.

Being new to teaching English, I had not actually ran literature circles in a classroom until this school year. First quarter, I was not prepared enough and neither were the students to have literature circle discussion. Second quarter, I led small group discussions with the students about the books, but they were not in charge of the conversation. Finally in third quarter, I was able to run literature circles with the students leading their own discussions!

The students were able to choose between two books, and they met once a week with their specific reading groups. Some days, the students met with people reading the same book and other days they met with students reading the other book. This allowed the students to compare the literary elements of their dystopian novel with the other dystopian novel the other students were reading. Instead of the discussions being scripted, I had a bucket with random questions in it that I had prepared prior to literature circles. The students would draw a question, talk about it for 5 - 10 minutes and then they would have to choose a new question to discuss. I am really looking forward to running literature circles again fourth quarter!

Students participating in their discussions!

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iReady March Madness Tournament!

One of the programs we use at Baldwin to pinpoint students needs is iReady. This program is a differentiated reading program that supports students and monitors their progress throughout the school year. According to the research, if a student uses iReady, they have a "significantly higher chance of achieving proficiency" on the state test. Our expectation here at Baldwin is for students to complete 45 minutes and pass one lesson on their reading iReady per week. They are given some class time throughout the week, but the majority of this 45 minutes is expected to be completed as homework. In order to make this more enjoyable for my students, and to create some competition, I decided to create an iReady March Madness Tournament! For this tournament, students were grouped into teams of five and played four weeks of season games. The winner was declared by adding up all of the team members' minutes. Then, students were seeded into a tournament bracket, just like the rea...

Colored Tables For Grouping

So I am not able to take all of the credit for this idea, but I like it so much that I thought I would share it! Whenever I was first allowed in my classroom, I noticed the tables had colored paint around the outsides. Since each one was peeling and looked awful, I decided I would scrape off all of the paint and just come up with different ways to group my students whenever necessary. After a couple hours of scraping (much harder than I though it was going to be) I decided to instead give the tables a new coat of paint. Having the colors on the table is perfect for whenever I want my students to work in groups of more than 4, or if I want a select group of students to share. Plus, I like how it adds a touch of color to the classroom! The finished product is below!

Mr. Bradford's Classroom

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